To Another Day
by mille libri
Summary: Doc and Wynonna attempt to recover from the loss of their girl. Set at the beginning of Season 3.


_Thank you for reading!_

* * *

It got dark at night. Not just because the sun went down, but because by somewhere around three in the morning, the deepest part of night, everyone else had gone to sleep and Wynonna had started to sober up, and she would find herself just drunk enough to have lost control of her thoughts, and nowhere near drunk enough to blot them out any longer. Lying in her bed, or wherever she'd happened to collapse, she would look out the window at the stars and worry. Where was she? Was she crying now, alone in the dark without her mother, or her father, or her doting aunt Waverly?

Probably not. Aunt Gus was efficient. She'd be taking care of her, little Alice Michelle, whose tiny face Wynonna had seen so briefly. But Gus wasn't Alice's mother. Wynonna was that, and she never felt that pull more strongly than in the depths of night when she was alone.

She had never wanted to be a mother. No more Earps were going to come from her, thank you very much. No more Earp heirs. No one else caught in this nightmare. But the way Alice had come into being—despite all of Wynonna's birth control, out of one encounter with a man who should have been long dead, and any chance Wynonna might have had to end the pregnancy headed off by that damned time spell—it felt like fate. Like this little girl was always meant to exist, and Wynonna was meant to be her mother.

Her arms formed a circle around emptiness, as if she was holding her baby from afar. The physical realities of birth had come and gone, and she was healed now, her milk dried up, back in fighting shape. The rest of it, the bone deep memory of what it had been like to have Alice moving inside her, safe and sound, that intimate connection with another person that Wynonna had never intended and could never have imagined, that stayed. The ache in her throat from unshed tears was worse than the ache in her breasts from unused milk had been on its worst day.

And she drove herself crazy wondering why it had been so almighty important that Alice be created if it meant that she had to spend her life in hiding from everyone who loved her. Wynonna could see it in Waverly's face occasionally, the concern for Alice, the way she wished she had her baby niece to cuddle and spoil … and she saw it in Doc's eyes all the time, the bleak knowledge that he had a baby girl he could never see again. Alice could have been such a gift to him, a life he had never imagined given to him in exchange for the immortality he had lost—but it had been poison, instead, leaching what vitality remained in him, making him wonder what he had left to live for. And he blamed Wynonna. She could tell that, despite what he said, in the barely leashed anger when they were sparring and the cool distance in his blue eyes when they weren't.

So Doc was lost to her, also, just like Alice was, as remote as if he, too, was miles away, and Wynonna was left here alone in the deep darkness of the night, trying to stay awake. She didn't dare sleep with thoughts of her girl in her head. That only led to nightmares of Alice being tricked back into the Ghost River Triangle at various ages, of her girl held hostage by revenants … and worse.

No, she couldn't sleep. And she couldn't drink past a certain time of night and still be ready to fight the next day—not in enough quantity to deaden her thoughts, at least.

What was funny about the nightmares was how Alice looked the same in every one of them. Always with fly-away hair like Wynonna's own, unruly and tangled and wild, and always, always with Doc Holliday's blue eyes. It was enough to make Wynonna wish she knew how to get in touch with Gus to find out if Alice had her father's eyes.

Which was exactly why she had made Gus agree never to get in contact with anyone from Purgatory. It was as much to make sure that Wynonna couldn't yield to the ever-present temptation—the need, really—to know about her girl as it was to keep anyone else from finding out where Alice was. The worst nightmares were the ones where this inexplicable mother love Wynonna had never imagined she could feel were the reason Alice was found and brought back to Purgatory.

Never. Whatever happened, whatever it cost Wynonna, Alice was never coming back here.

* * *

Doc lay flat on his back on the bed, staring up at the ceiling. He didn't want to blink, because if he blinked he would be tempted to close his eyes, and if he closed his eyes he might want to sleep, and he didn't want to sleep, for so many reasons. Not just because the beats of his heart now had a finite limit, and he wasn't sure he wanted to waste them in sleep … but also because he didn't know what to do with the life that remained to him, and he didn't know a way out of that quandary, and he didn't want to think about it, but he couldn't stop. If he could only find an answer, a reason, a purpose, he could sleep. But there was none.

And then there were the nightmares. His sojourn in Hell had given him fodder for enough nightmares to last several lifetimes, not just the one he had left. And when those images failed, he was tormented by visions of Wynonna and his terrible hunger for her, to go to her and tangle his hands in her hair and rest his head on her shoulder and just … be, there in her arms. Ah, if Wyatt could see him now. But he couldn't go to her. She had enough on her plate as it was, she didn't need a dying demon-haunted cowboy on her shoulders, too.

Inevitably, thoughts of Wynonna led to thoughts of their baby girl, that sweet-faced little lady he had glimpsed so briefly before she was taken from him forever. Doc's heart yearned for his girl with a sharpness he had never known before. Somehow in a long, misspent life fatherhood had never come up. But now he wanted it, wanted it badly. To bandage a skinned knee, to learn how to tie pigtails, to read old books out loud, to nestle a tiny sleeping form against his shoulder … He could picture it all so vividly, a life he had never known he wanted, realized just as the sweetest dream he had ever dreamed had been taken from him.

He blamed Wynonna for that. Not that he didn't understand why she had done what she did … but she had never spoken of it to him, never asked him what he wanted. He could have taken little Alice Michelle, taken her away and kept her safe. Except that would have meant never seeing Wynonna again, which would have torn at his heart in a different way.

Over and over, Doc tried to tell himself that Wynonna had done what she thought was best. That she hadn't been wrong about the danger to their baby girl if she had stayed in the Ghost River Triangle. That she had kept him at arm's length out of her own terrible fear and a longing of her own that Doc glimpsed occasionally when they were too tired to spar any more. He hid any temptation to feel sorry for Wynonna under a terrible anger, and he attempted to slake his desire to be close to her with endless sparring sessions, suspecting that she was doing the same but too afraid of the answer to ask. If he let go of the anger, for just a minute, if he stopped thinking about Hell and missing Alice and blaming Wynonna … and underneath it all, hating himself for not having been strong enough … then he had to deal with what came next, with this life here in the Ghost River Triangle, with Wynonna who didn't know what she wanted, with himself not knowing if he could have what he knew he wanted, what he longed for.

Those were the hardest dreams to bear, the ones where they lay together in bed with their baby breathing soft and sweet between them. Because neither of them could admit that was what they wanted, and it could never be anyway.

Life was damned funny—and the only thing that kept Doc clinging to it was the certainty that death would be worse. That and the hope that someday, somehow, he and Wynonna could end the Earp curse and see their girl again.

* * *

Being kidnapped by your former lover and nearly turned into a vampire does tend to make one reconsider one's attitude toward life, Doc reflected, staring into the shimmering liquid in his glass. Alice was gone where they could not follow, yes, but she was alive and safe, which was the important part. And what Wynonna must have gone through planning to give her up and actually handing her off to Waverly had to have been agonizing, testing parts of her she had never known were there.

He felt for her. Underneath all the anger, there was that. He wanted to comfort her, and Wynonna would not accept comfort. She might, however, accept help, if it was offered in the right spirit. She might accept companionship.

Seeing her there last night in that crazy black getup the vampires had put her in, something had shifted in Doc's vision, like a dark fog lifting to allow him to see clearly for the first time since he had found himself in hell. She was beautiful. And brave. And she needed him, whether she would ever admit it out loud or not. And a life at her side was a lot more fun than any other future Doc could imagine. It had been a long time since he had considered the concept of fun … but it might be time he began again.

When Wynonna walked through the door of the bar, he was alone, thinking of Kate and what she must have endured as an apparently unwilling vampire over the past century. Life had never been kind to the women in his life. Perhaps he might start making up for that unfortunate fact.

"Whiskey. Neat," Wynonna said. Wyatt's gun was in her hand, and she was still wearing that black dress. It wasn't her style—Doc preferred her in jeans—but she was beautiful, no question about that. She lifted her skirt and came down the steps. "God, it feels good to say that again."

"I'll bet."

She put down the gun and her coat on a stool. "Even if it is 10 a.m."

Doc picked up a bottle and two glasses and joined her. "It's never the wrong time for whiskey. Except when there is none at your disposal."

He put down the glasses and poured them each a shot. How long had it been since they had been alone together, not fighting, either physically or verbally? At least nineteen weeks, he thought, imagining briefly what baby Alice must look like today.

They smiled at each other, each sensing that something had changed, that the past was becoming the thread that could tie them together rather than the weapon that was tearing them apart.

Doc pushed the second glass toward Wynonna before lifting his in a toast. "To another day on God's green earth." His days were precious now, as were Wynonna's. He didn't want to waste any more of them. "Spent fighting, no less."

"To victory in the face of vampires." Wynonna hesitated. "To Alice."

They hadn't spoken her name aloud before, at least not to each other, and in that moment when Wynonna gave it voice for the first time, they were something new: They were Alice's parents. The two of them, united, for her.

"Always," Doc said softly. He had promised many women many things, but he had never been so sure of his enduring love until that little darling had entered his life. Wynonna had brought that to him, and he could only be grateful for it.

They clinked their glasses and drank. Then, yielding to the impulse he had been fighting for longer than he wanted to think about, Doc removed his hat and kissed her, slow and lingering.

Wynonna was smiling as the kiss ended. "What's got into you?"

"Something I thought was lost."

"Well, welcome back, Holliday."

He returned her smile, and then he kissed her again, with promise.


End file.
